English Police Mysteries

On a cold Venetian night, shortly before Christmas, a street vendor is killed in a scuffle in Campo San Stefano. The closest witnesses are the tourists who had been browsing the man's wares: fake handbags of every designer label. The dead man had been working as a vu cumpra, one of the many African immigrants purveying goods outside normal shop hours and without work permits. Commissario Brunetti's response is that of everybody involved: why would anyone kill an illegal immigrant?

DI Rob Marshall is stuck in Gartcosh, leading the new Behavioural Sciences Unit – a staff of one and a third – where he’s executing a fruitless hunt, profiling every single murder in Scotland just in case they’re serial cases. But when a young Peebles woman’s body is discovered in Neidpath Tunnel, disused since the sixties, Marshall is called in to consult on a case on his old home turf. Paired up with his replacement, a cop who’s disinterested in the work, Marshall must tread a line between helping and not jumping to conclusions.

After getting canned from the Seattle PD, brilliant, wisecracking Thomas Prescott follows his sister Lacy to Philadelphia, where she swims on the Drexel University team. While Thomas’s slapstick antics mask a keen analytic mind, it’s his nose for trouble that leads him again and again into dicey situations. The ex–homicide detective is not long in Philly before getting caught up in two high-powered criminal cases. Thomas stumbles into a crime scene amid the Occupy Philadelphia protests. Activist Brooke Wexley has been strangled within sight of city hall.

Detective Nikki Galena's friend and neighbor meets a tragic end, but there's more to his death than meets the eye. And someone terrible from DS Joseph Easter's past is back.

DI Nikki Galena faces her toughest challenge yet. Can she save her team and herself from a cruel and determined adversary who will stop at nothing to harm Nikki and her colleagues? First she must work out who wants revenge against her or one of her detectives. Full of twists and turns, this is a crime novel that will keep listeners riveted until the stunning ending.

The Pyramid is the long-awaited addition to Henning Mankell's critically celebrated and internationally best-selling Kurt Wallander mystery series: the book of five short mysteries that takes us back to the beginning. Here are the stories that trace, chronologically, Wallander's growth from a rookie cop into a young father and then a middle-aged divorcé, illuminating how Wallander became a first-rate detective and highlighting new facets of a now canonical character.

Crime and criminals keep getting in the way of Detective Garda Sergeant Mike West's personal life. The woman he loves is living in his house, in his spare bedroom. It should be simple, but it isn't. He has a solution. A romantic weekend away, in a lighthouse on Clare Island. A stunning place, a beautiful woman. What could be more perfect? When one of the islanders dies in a bizarre and a tragic accident, West is roped in to help. But it isn't an accident, and there is more than one suspect. There's also more than one secret. Can West solve the case before someone else dies?

A young woman's body is found in a remote barn on the Fens. Before she was killed, one of her fingers had been cut off. Who is inflicting this violence and why? The young woman in the barn had been kept captive for some time. And the case shows strong similarities to an unsolved murder in Derbyshire. When another woman is found alive with similar injuries, the case grows even more complicated.

Revellers are flocking into Greenborough for the yearly Dark Greenborough Festival, a three-day event celebrating local folklore, superstition, and the darker side of life. What the public doesn't know is that there has been a warning sent to the police, saying that Greenborough will be a very dangerous place this year. The anonymous letter ends with the Latin phrase, Mors certa, hora incerta: Death is certain, the hour uncertain.

The polluted waters of the canals in Venice are an ever-present issue; but environmental concerns become significant in Commissario Guido Brunetti's work when an investigator from the Carabiniere—looking into the illegal hauling of garbage—asks for a favor. But the investigator is not the only one with a special request. Brunetti's father-in-law needs help and a mysterious woman comes into the picture. And the Commissario soon finds himself in the middle of an investigation into murder and corruption more dangerous than anything he's seen before.

DI Nikki Galena's close friend Helen Brook is involved in a serious accident where she is trapped in a collapsed cellar. After her hard-won recovery, Helen is still getting flashbacks to a man she says was down there with her and who confessed to a murder. But no trace of this man can be found. Then Helen tells Nikki that someone is watching her. But is all this in her friend's imagination and part of her post-traumatic stress?

Grace Repton, a beautiful older woman, walks into the police station to tell Detective Matt Ballard she has information that could stop a murder. Her fiance, the infamous serial killer Jeremy Reader, has told her that he has a disciple who is going to kill using Reader's horrific methods. Reader murdered five women and was finally brought to justice by Detective Ballard. Reader is safely imprisoned in a high security prison, and claiming to be a reformed man who wants to help the police.

Who could have suspected that the exciting stag party for the groom would be the prelude to the murder of his close friend Charlie Hatton? And Charlie's death was only the first in a string of puzzling murders involving small-time gangsters, cheating husbands, and loose women. Now Chief Inspector Wexford and his assistant join forces with the groom to track down a killer....

Renée Ballard and the LAPD’s Open-Unsolved Unit get a hot shot DNA connection between a recently arrested man and a serial rapist and murderer who went quiet twenty years ago. The arrested man is only twenty-four, so the genetic link must be familial: His father was the Pillowcase Rapist, responsible for a five-year reign of terror in the city of angels. But when Ballard and her team move in on their suspect, they encounter a baffling web of secrets and legal hurdles. Meanwhile, Ballard’s badge, gun, and ID are stolen.

A young woman's body is discovered on a deserted footpath. It seems like a simple crime for DCI Sophie Allen and her team to solve. But not when the victim's mother is found strangled the next morning. The case grows more complex as DCI Sophie Allen discovers that the victims had secret histories, involving violence and intimidation. There's an obvious suspect, but Detective Allen isn't convinced. Could someone else be lurking in the shadows, someone savagely violent, looking for warped revenge?

The Fens are burning, and Detective Nikki Galena faces a cat-and-mouse battle with a killer arsonist. Someone is lighting fires. First they target homes and businesses, but then a body is found at one of the crime scenes. More fires are lit. And at each one a single person dies. But the victims have led spotless lives, and apparently there's no connection between them. Meanwhile, the town is facing a very peculiar threat from a group of sinister Satanists led by a charismatic businessman. Who is burning with anger, and can Nikki stop them before anyone else dies?

In a secluded farm house in the Pacific Northwest, a family has been slaughtered - and a teenage son has disappeared. Single mother and cop Emily Kenyon spearheads a dark hunt for a killer. But Emily's teenage daughter, Jenna, is one step ahead of her. Then another family is butchered, and another. As Emily fits the puzzle pieces together, she makes a chilling discovery: The killer is coming after her and her daughter....

After a routine delivery, midwife Sarah Brandt visits her patient in a rooming house and finds that another boarder, a young girl, has been killed. At the request of sergeant Frank Malloy, she searches the girl's room and discovers that the victim is from one of the most prominent families in New York - and the sister of an old friend. The powerful family, fearful of scandal, refuses to permit an investigation. But with Malloy's help, Sarah begins a dangerous quest to bring the killer to justice before death claims another victim.

On a spring day in Venice, Commissario Brunetti and his assistant, Vianello, play hooky to help Vianello's friend Marco Ripetti, arrested during an environmental protest. They secure his release, only to be faced with the fury of the man's father-in-law, Giovanni De Cal, who has made violent threats against Ripetti. Brunetti's curiousity is peaked, and he finds himself drawn to investigate. Is De Cal the type of man to carry out his threats?

Detective Olivia Mast would rather run through gunfire than return to her former Amish community in Unity, Maine, where she killed her abusive husband in self-defense and witnessed her family's murder. After an Amish man is murdered, the community will not answer questions from the police, so she begrudgingly dons her old prayer kapp and heads to Unity to investigate the murder undercover. To make things even worse, her captain also orders her to protect the man she dated as a teen: Isaac Troyer, who was attacked on the night of the murder but can't remember the incident.